Science teachers’ perceptions toward discrepant events applied in science education

Research design

In this research, in order to designate discrepant events perceptions of secondary school science teachers with different experiences, phenomenology, one of the qualitative research designs, was applied. Phenomenology design focuses on how people perceive phenomenon, describe, judge, remember, make sense of, talk about it with others and what they feel about it (Patton, 2014). Phenomenology study defines the common meaning of life experience of several people on a phenomenon or concept (Cresswell, 2013). The research is defined as study of phenomenology since this study aims to determine science teachers’ perception, level of awareness regarding discrepant events and how they use discrepant events in lessons.

Participates

Working group of this study consists of 10 science teachers working in Nevşehir province in Turkey with different professional experience. On deciding samples, the method of maximum diversity and criterion sampling, among purposeful sampling, was chosen. Main purpose of purposeful sampling is not generalization of research findings from sample to population, but is to select cases including richness in terms of information to deepen the research (Patton, 2014). In order to create working group, two criteria were taken into account depending on criterion sampling: being volunteer to participate in the research and working as science teacher while maximum sampling is to choose large scaled cases purposefully to get differences on related dimensions (Patton, 2014). In this research, preferring science teacher with a variety of experience is considered an appropriate criterion for maximum diversity. In this research, data obtained from limited number of participations toward discrepant event perception was analyzed in detailed. In Table 1, demographic characteristic of science teachers participating the research group are shown:

Table 1. Demographic characteristic of science teachers participating the research group

Teachers	Experience	Department of Graduation
T1 T2 T3 T4 T5 T6 T7 T8 T9 T10	1-5 year 1-5 year 6-10 year 6-10 year 11-15 year 11-15 year 16-20 year 16-20 year More than 20 year More than 20 year	Faculty of Education- Science Education Faculty of Education- Science Education Faculty of Education- Science Education Faculty of Education- Science Education Faculty of Science and Letters- Chemistry Faculty of Science and Letters - Biology Faculty of Engineering- Chemistry Faculty of Science and Letters - Biology Faculty of Education – Chemistry Education Faculty of Education – Biology Education

Instruments

In this research, interview and observation were used to determine perception of discrepant events of science teachers. Interview was conducted to find out things that can not be observed directly and to reveal what people have in mind and to collect their stories (Patton, 2014). For this purpose, an interview form consisting of 6 open-end questions was prepared. Two academicians who are expert on the issue presented their ideas about interview questions. Questions were also asked to two science teachers who aren’t among participants and a pilot study was just started. As a result of expert opinion and pilot study, 4 questions were added to interview form, and some questions in the form were rearranged. With the latest changes on the interview form, the type of interview form approach that the researcher is independent was determinated directly with subtitles or headlines related to a talk, to ask questions spontaneously and to form a speech course abiding by focal point (Patton, 2014). Interviews were recorded and written as transcript. In order to understand whether answers science teachers give regarding discrepant events are compatible with lesson teaching performance, some of the data were collected through observation of classroom activities. Validity and reliability of the research was developed by checking analyses through videos recorded during observation. An observation form was prepared by the researcher within the scope of this research as there is no study related to topic. Two expert academicians finalized the form. The language of having interview was Turkish, while findings of the study are stated in the study in English. In the research, nonparticipant observation method was applied in which the researcher doesn’t participate the research interactively to collect data (Creswell, 2013). Five volunteer teachers were chosen considering participation of teachers with each group in classroom observation (Table 2). In this research, the researcher watches a lesson chosen in spring semester by a teacher recording it and taking notes during a lesson period.

Table 2. Information concerning the teachers' classroom observation

Teacher	Observation date	Class level	Unit	Subject
T2	Mar 06, 2015	6th grade	Reproduction, Growth and Development in th Living Things	Reproduction, Growth and Development in animals
T3	Mar 03, 2015	8th grade	The states of matter and heat	Heat and temperature
T5	Mar 10, 2015	7th grade	The properties and structure of matter	Elements and symbols
T8	Mar 02, 2015	7th grade	Electricity in our lives	Electrostatic
T9	Mar 09, 2015	8th grade	The properties and structure of matter	Acids and bases

The qualitative data obtained from this study were analyzed according to the descriptive and content analysis approaches suggested by Strauss and Corbin (1990). Within the context of the research, a conceptual framework was created for the descriptive analysis from the literature and the coded data correlated to each other and the themes were formed in the direction of the interview questions. Themes were rearranged by being re-examined similarity and differences of coded data. Under the interview questions (the themes), code lists were created taking into account the theoretical structure of the discrepant events. Within this framework, the data were subjected to content analysis and coded. After the checks are done, the code list was given the final form. In the first question asked discrepant events examples, it was compared that whether examples given by the teachers are considered as a discrepant events and coherence of inter-encoder reliability was examined. When the inter-encoder reliability was calculated, the formula Reliability= [Number of agreements / (Total number of agreements + Total number of disagreements) x 100] proposed by Miles and Huberman (1994) was used and calculated as 80%. In addition, the perception rubric used in the evaluation of the observations was filled by watching video recordings of the lectures by another researcher. The reliability between the two researchers was calculated as 87% (Miles & Huberman, 1994).

The data obtained from the teachers' views have been tried to be diversified by observation data. The analysis results of the data were described in detail with citations obtained in observations and interviews by showing with tables.